Being a student of hypnotherapy and shortly due to qualify, it’s not surprising that I have a great interest in the effect emotions have on the mind and body.
There are good emotions and bad emotions. Emotions reside in the subconscious mind. The subconscious mind tells the conscious mind how to feel. Of course, people would rather feel good emotions instead of bad emotions. Through hypnosis the subconscious mind can be accessed to change negative emotions into positive ones. As a hypnotherapist I am looking to identify emotions in order for the emotions to be released – once released (and as such, dealt with) they are no longer a problem to the mind and body.
One study looked at hypnotic suggestion, emotions, and pain. Hypnotic suggestion was used to induce specific emotions. The researchers then looked at how the various emotional states affected pain. They found that negative emotions, like fear and sadness, increased the level of perceived pain in participants. However, when positive emotions were hypnotically induced, the positive emotions that resulted were static and did not continue to increase. The significance of this study is that certain emotions can be created with hypnosis without side effects.
Other research studies have looked into hypnosis on the study of emotions using both highly suggestible and low suggestible participants. When highly suggestible participants were given hypnotic suggestions to be ’emotionally numb’ or unaffected by either positive or negative emotions, researchers found that they were not susceptible to the emotions and that the hypnotic suggestions were able to produce a numbing affect on their emotions. When comparing highly suggestible people to low suggestible people, the highly suggestible participants experience more emotional numbing (Rainville, 2002).
I very much look forward to developing my skills in this area and am very excited to enter into Year 2 and incorporating hypnotherapy with psychotherapy.
Mind Body and Sole 